A film by Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix SutcliffeT)ERROR...Jake Rabinbach Dawson Smith ! ! ! 7 Production Intern Mina So Teranex Operator Evan Johnson Animation Paul Docherty Peter

A film by Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe

(T)ERROR is the first film to infiltrate a covert counterterrorism sting, with filmmakers documenting the action in real time as it unfolds on the ground. Viewers get an unfettered glimpse of the government's counterterrorism tactics and the murky justifications behind them through the perspective of a 63-year-old Black revolutionary turned FBI informant.

84 minutes

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SYNOPSIS (T)ERROR is the first documentary to place filmmakers on the ground during an active FBI counterterrorism sting operation. Through the perspective of "Shariff," a 63-year-old Black revolutionary turned informant, viewers get an unfettered glimpse of the government's counterterrorism tactics and the murky justifications behind them. The film begins in an undisclosed location in eastern United States. Shariff (whose legal name is Saeed Torres) works as a cook in a middle school cafeteria, but is struggling to make ends meet. When the FBI calls, inviting him to work on a terrorism investigation in Pittsburgh, Shariff reluctantly leaves his young son behind, for what he hopes will be his last case, and a chance to make several hundred thousand dollars. Upon arrival in Pittsburgh, Shariff informs the filmmakers that the FBI has ordered him to befriend a white Muslim convert named Khalifah Al-Akili, and assess his interest in attending a terrorist training camp abroad. As his investigation of Khalifah unfolds, a parallel examination of Shariff begins as well. Uncovering a complex web of greed, betrayal and regret, (T)ERROR reveals the origins and evolution of Shariff’s complicated past. Ultimately, we return to Harlem, Shariff's birthplace, where we learn of his role in imprisoning Tarik Shah, a renowned jazz bassist who, in 2007, received a 15-year sentence for pledging to train Al Qaeda mujahideen in hand-to-hand combat. Shariff explains that it was Shah’s case that forced him to flee New York City and resulted in his excommunication from his friends, family, and community. “At the trial, everyone from the mosque came," Shariff says. "Because they couldn't believe it. They had to see it with their own eyes.” Meanwhile, Shariff finds himself under increasing pressure from the FBI to produce results in the Al-Akili case. Midway through film, a dramatic discovery upends the investigation, and raises serious questions about the ethics, and effectiveness of the FBI's tactics. Taut, stark, and controversial, (T)ERROR illuminates the fragile relationships between individual and surveillance state in modern America, and asks: Who is watching the watchers?

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DIRECTORS’ STATEMENT Lyric R. Cabral (Director, Producer) I have an extremely personal connection to (T)ERROR, as I have known the main character, "Shariff," for over a decade. Outside of law enforcement personnel, I am one of few people who have maintained contact with Shariff over the span of several FBI counterterrorism assignments. Starting in 2003, while I was a young journalism student, Shariff was my neighbor. We lived in a 3-story Harlem brownstone and, for several years, we engaged in diurnal conversations about current events, politics, and his former involvement with the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Later, court records revealed that his garden apartment was an FBI “safe house,” wired with audio and video surveillance, to record interactions between Shariff and Tarik Shah, a suspected terrorist. Shah, who I met on several occasions, was arrested on May 28, 2005 and, within days, the FBI swiftly relocated Shariff to South Carolina. On the morning that he fled New York City, Shariff called me and, speaking frantically, made a cryptic request. "I'm going to be living in South Carolina for a minute, laying low. But if anybody asks about me, don't give them any information and try to find out who they are." I pressed Shariff for more details, wondering what had motivated his relocation. "Come see me soon. I have a lot to tell you." In the summer of 2007, I traveled to South Carolina where Shariff disclosed that he had been working as an FBI terrorist informant since 1991. I was appalled by the revelation, and yet attracted to the tremendous potential of his narrative. Seemingly, Shariff is not a protagonist but an anti-hero, whom many viewers may even consider a villain. Initially, I questioned his motivations and whether I, as a filmmaker, should even document his story. I left South Carolina, feeling a mixture of revulsion and excitement. And for the next ten years, I would call Shariff once a month, just to ask him how he is, and where he is... David Felix Sutcliffe (Director, Producer) Lyric and I first met while teaching film to teenagers at an afterschool program in Harlem, back in 2005. While teaching at the program, one of our students, a 16-year-old Muslim girl named Adama Bah, was arrested by the FBI after they accused her of being a "potential" suicide bomber. This event had a profound impact on both Lyric and I, and sparked a growing interest and awareness in our government’s broader counterterrorism efforts. I ultimately ended up making Adama, an hour-long film about Adama and her family for PBS. While working on Adama, I noticed that the vast majority of the terrorist plots “discovered” by the government were, in fact, created by paid FBI informants, working at the direction of their superiors at the Bureau. In these cases, informants spent months, sometimes years, developing and nurturing relationships with targets, and encouraging them to participate in terrorist activities. On a political level, I found these cases incredibly problematic. However, I was fascinated by the idea of these informants, individuals who cultivated friendships with targets, only to then betray them. And then, in the fall of 2011, Lyric casually inquired if I had any plans for a future project. I happened to mention that I had been fantasizing about making an informant documentary, but figured it was an impossible idea. How would you even find an informant? And why would they ever let themselves be filmed? Lyric subsequently informed me of her relationship with Shariff. Astonished, I immediately suggested that she get in touch with him, and see if he would be interested in participating in a film. When she contacted Shariff to explore the idea, he said that he was “working,” but that he was interested, and that we should come to his home to discuss the idea further...

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FILMMAKERS’ BIOS

Lyric R. Cabral is a New York-based filmmaker and photojournalist who documents stories seldom seen in mainstream media. In support of her verité work, Cabral has received artist grants from BBC Storyville, the Tribeca Film Institute, the Sundance Institute, the Independent Television Service, NYSCA, the International Documentary Association, and the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund. Cabral recently completed (T)ERROR, her first feature length documentary, co-directed with David Felix Sutcliffe, which premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, where it won a Special Jury Prize for Break Out First Feature. Cabral, along with co-director Sutcliffe, was honored by the Tribeca Film Institute with the 2013 Creative Promise Award. (T)ERROR was also a recipient of the 2013 Garrett Scott Documentary Development Grant, awarded by the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. In 2013, Cabral was named by Filmmaker Magazine as one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” Her photography has been recently published through Aperture

Foundation, National Geographic Channel UK, the Nation, and the Village Voice, and is currently on exhibition with "Gordon Parks: The Making of an Argument.”

David Felix Sutcliffe is an independent documentary filmmaker whose work explores issues of national security and civil liberties in the post-9/11 era. In 2013, he was included in Filmmaker Magazine's annual list of "25 New Faces of Independent Film." His 2011 film, Adama, was broadcast on PBS, and featured the story of a 16-year-old Muslim girl growing up in Harlem who was arrested by the FBI on suspicion of being a “potential suicide bomber.” His follow-up film, (T)ERROR, co-directed with acclaimed photojournalist Lyric R. Cabral, marks the first time that filmmakers have had access to an active FBI informant in a domestic counterterrorism investigation. (T)ERROR debuted at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival where it won a Special Jury Prize for Break Out First Feature. Along with (T)ERROR co-director Cabral, Sutcliffe was honored by the Tribeca Film Institute with the 2013 Creative Promise Award. In 2014, he was selected as a fellow for the Sundance Institute's Edit and Story Lab, as well as their Creative Producing Lab. His work as a filmmaker has been funded by the BBC, the NEA, the Tribeca Film Institute, the

Sundance Institute, and the Independent Television Service.

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PRESS "It's the sort of movie around which congressional investigations...should be built” - Salt Lake Tribune "The 14 best movies we saw at Sundance" - Esquire "Cinematically new and politically incisive" - Ioncinema "Thriller-style show of cat and mouse" - Slant Magazine "Great journalism and great filmmaking" - Sight and Sound Magazine PRODUCTION CREDITS Directors/Producers Lyric R. Cabral David Felix Sutcliffe Producer Christopher St. John Co-Producer Shirel Kozak Executive Producers Eugene Jarecki Nick Fraser Executive Producer for ITVS Sally Jo Fifer Supervising Producer for ITVS David Eisenberg Music by Robert Miller Directors of Photography Lyric R. Cabral David Felix Sutcliffe Editors Laura Minnear Jean-Philippe Boucicaut

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Additional Editors Anoosh Tertzakian Todd Woody Richman Consulting Editors Jonathan Oppenheim Lewis Erskine A.C.E. Creative Consultant Laura Poitras Co-Editor David Felix Sutcliffe Commissioning Editor for BBC Storyville Kate Townsend-Vision Sample Editor Sabrina S. Gordon Trailer Editor Harry Geller Archival Research Lyric R. Cabral Archival Producers Lyric R. Cabral Dan DiMauro Photo Retouching Misra Walker Lyric R. Cabral Still Photographer Mark Nevers Additional Sound Frisly Soberanis Office Manager Kara Elverson Transcribers Madison Ferris Ian Greenspan Andrew McLain Tunisia Mitchell Jake Rabinbach Dawson Smith

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Production Intern Mina So Teranex Operator Evan Johnson Animation Paul Docherty Peter Haas Additional Animation Aaron Hodgins Davis Conform Editor Ben Cortes Re-recording Mixer Paul Levin Supervising Re-recording Mixer Kevin Wilson Foley Artist Jason Trammell Colorist Eric Alvarado Post Production Services Prime Focus Music Rights Supervisor John McCollough Legal Counsel Fernando Ramirez E&O Legal Counsel Robert Stein Additional Legal David Kuhn Victor A. Kovner of Davis Wright Tremaine Ben Wizner Michael Ratner Margaret Kunstler Carey Shenkman Victoria Cooke Hayden M. Goldblatt Kathy Manley

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Production Accountants Hermes Laoudas & Brian Pecker, Shine & Company LLP Production Insurance Mike Groner & Kent Hamilton, Front Row Insurance Brokers Domestic Sales Tristen Tuckfield, Creative Artists Agency Fiscal Sponsor The Eisenhower Project Special Thanks Hibo Al-Akili Khalifah Ali Al-Akili Pascale Boucicaut Frank Fournier Marlene Alicia McWilliams-McCollum Gwen Schantz Tarik Shah Othello St. John Solomon St. John Saeed Shariff Torres/Theodore Shelby Saeed’s son The Sutcliffe Family Lois Vossen This Film Was Supported by Tribeca Film Institute/A&E Storylabs Good Pitch Independent Filmmaker Project Garrett Scott Documentary Development Grant IDFA Main Pitch Forum Sundance Institute Documentary Edit and Story Lab Sundance Institute Creative Producing Lab and Summit This Film Was Generously Supported by Grants From Chicken and Egg Pictures Tribeca All Access Firelight Media Next Step Media Fund International Documentary Association Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program / John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Initiative with additional funding from Candescent Films New York State Council on the Arts In Association With ITVS BBC VPRO DR

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Archival Materials Courtesy ABC News VideoSource Alvin Flythe AP Images C-SPAN Video Library Ciné-Tamaris Dick Griffin KHALED FAZAA/ AFP/ Getty Images ITN Source/Reuters KQED Marlene Muhammad Siddeeq NBC Universal Archives New York Times Jane Rosenberg T3Media/CBS Elizabeth McWilliams Photographs by Gordon Parks, Courtesy and Copyright the Gordon Parks Foundation. Untitled, Chicago, Illinois, 1963 Untitled, Chicago, Illinois, 1963 Malcolm X at Rally, Chicago, Illinois, 1963 Malcolm X Leads Muslims in Prayer, Chicago, Illinois, 1963 Untitled, Harlem, New York, 1963 Ethel Sharrieff, Chicago, Illinois, 1963 Untitled, Chicago, Illinois, 1963 “Mississippi Mud” Written by Valerian Smith and Bob Robin Performed by Black Blood and the Chocolate Pickles Courtesy of Tuff City Records “Door Peeper” Written by Tommy Tornado Performed by Tommy Tornado backed by The Rude Rich & High Notes Courtesy of Noise Problems This program was produced by Stories Seldom Seen LLC which is solely responsible for its content. (T)ERROR is a co-production of Stories Seldom Seen LLC, Charlotte Street Films, and Independent Television Service (ITVS), with funding provided by Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) ©2015 Stories Seldom Seen LLC All Rights Reserved